TITLE: Fitting exponential curve to data
QUESTION [12 upvotes]: If I have a collection of data points that follow an exponential curve relationship, how can I manually construct the equation that defines the best-fit exponential curve for the data?

REPLY [5 votes]: If the function to be fitted is y=A*exp(k*x), then a classical linear regression applied to ln(y)=c+k*x directly leads to the goal. 
If the function is y=A*exp(k*x)+C, this is more difficult. The usual methods of non linear regression requires a guess of the parameters and iterative computation.
A different and non classical method doesn't requires guess nor interation. This traightforward method  is shown, with a numerical example, pages 17-18 , in the paper :
http://fr.scribd.com/doc/14674814/Regressions-et-equations-integrales